#156 and #157 7/24/19 Two More Landscapes - Rolled Hay Bales and the Bull

Tap, tap, tap, roll the brush, tap, tap, tap.  That's what I did with these two landscapes.  They were a few days in the making....one day to paint in the sky and some of the foreground.  Then let it dry a bit, then come back in for the tapping.  I like the tapping for tree leaves.  It takes a while, but I like the textured effect.  I think I'm going to use this to fix the penguin ground too, there's always time to fix an oil painting.  Thank you Yasser Fayad!  Another thing I did with the three landscapes is not use any green paint....only yellow, blue and brown.  I figured that it would look a bit more natural, as every time I put my brush into the palette I'd be picking up a slightly different color.

These are two scenes that I pass on my way to work....I stop every once in a while on my way home, if the weather is nice and take some pictures.  When the hay bales were made, I noticed them in the morning (no time to stop) and I hoped and prayed that they would still be there on my way home for a photo shoot.  Heck, they stayed there for weeks.  The bull had a buddy with him on my way to work one morning (again, no time to stop, I allow zero extra seconds for my ride to work, extra seconds would be lost sleep) but on the way home it was just this one guy.  He didn't look too thrilled that I was there at the fence taking pictures.  If he had charged, I likely would have had a heart attack!  But he calmed right down and went about his business of eating more grass....so I took lots of pictures.  I asked Joe to give me a critique on this new technique, and he looked at each of the 3 landscapes and said, "Derivative......Lame......Belongs in the trash!"  He then explained he was quoting a Spongebob episode.  Uggggh.  His only advice was that the driveway on the haybales painting looked off, like it was a random stripe on an otherwise nice picture of a farm.  Good eye, I fixed it.

I'll look at these again tomorrow and maybe fix more things.

#155 7/20/19 Wolfsville Landscape

I prepped 3 canvases for landscape paintings...thinking I'd get them done over the weekend.  The prepping happened ok.  And I decided I would paint the sky on all of them first, then the next day begin painting the landscapes.  That way the edges between the trees and the sky would look a bit better...that the edges of the tree could have bits of sky poking through the leaves.  Saturday came and I set to work on the first one, the view from the top of Woodland Way looking down the hill at the road that leads into Wolfsville.  This is a road I travel sometimes on my way to work, when I've a bit more time (it's a little longer, but just a lovely road to travel).  Somebody bought some land and built a big white house, which I assumed was going to look out of place among the farmland and old houses.  But it actually looks rather nice.  My painting of this view, not so nice however, it took forever and I wasn't happy with the results and never made it to the other two landscapes.

So on Sunday I spent a bit of time watching a you tube video of a man doing a beautiful landscape, the title was "tutorial for a simple landscape" (by Yasser Fayad).  The video was nearly 2 hours long, included no instruction, just music set to a sped-up video of him painting.  The camera was set directly above the painting and he kept his palette right next to it. He used a very limited palette, so it was nice to see him mix so many different colors from just 5 blobs of paint.  He painted, and repainted, and repainted, and repainted....the thing was very labor-intensive, with so many layers of color.  I counted, and he tapped his brush to the canvas 42,856,011 times before he called it quits. Tap, tap, tap, turn the brush, tap, tap, tap, redo a spot that already looked perfect to me, tap, tap, tap, turn the brush, tap, tap, tap, redo another spot that looked perfect.  Phew it was exhausting!  I didn't watch it from start to finish, I kind of jumped around.  The end result was gorgeous, and it was helpful to see the mishmash of initial colors slowly transform to recognizable objects through the sheer persistence of tapping.

I worked some more on my landscape that evening.  Then the next day as well.  I noticed on other landscape paintings that I like, there is something in the foreground, even when the main event is far off in the distance....so I added some black-eyed susans.  They weren't in the photograph, but they're blooming everywhere right now, especially roadsides.  Sometimes it takes a few days for me to notice what it is that is holding a painting back.  In this case, it was a few trees in the first tree-line that lacked the normal symmetry that nature usually provides....they looked juvenile and once I tap, tap, tapped them into a better shape I became happier with the landscape.  It's not near where it could be, but it was great experience, and I need to put the brush down on this one.

Grandson checking out Nanna's paintings, deciding between an apple and that cute clownfish

#153 and #154 7/18/19 A Single Strawberry and a Gin & Tonic

These are the balance of the 4 easel paintings: a single fresh strawberry, and the top view of a gin and tonic.  Both have very dark backgrounds.  The strawberry painting kind of makes me laugh (but not out loud), as the strawberry is being showcased way too seriously. I struggled a bit with the strawberry; halfway through Dave walked in and said, "Oh, that's nice."  And I snapped back, "It's terrible, it's pathetic, leave me be."  After I put down a few more layers of red, its three dimensional shape took hold and I was myself again.  The little leaves at the top, just like the leaves on top of the tangerines, don't look as curvy and rounded as I would like.  It's a deeply shadowed area, so I'm going to blame that.

The final easel painting is the lime slices floating in a glass of what I'm going to assume is a gin & tonic (because that's where I would put lime slices).  The effervescent bubbling going on in the photo was too much for my limited skill set.  They are just random dots in my painting.  I'm just happy there were no ice cubes to paint (phew, been there done that!)  I was nervous about differentiating the greenish-blue of the fluid, with the green of the lime rinds, with the green of the lime flesh.  It was getting late, I felt I should be going to bed, but I wanted to finish it....so I pushed myself.  I'm pleased with the way the lime slices stand out.  Sleep, who needs it?!

#151 & #152 7/17/19 Citrus Fruits

I've got 8 more tiny easel canvases burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought I would knock 4 of them out tonight....instead I got the 4 photos selected and cropped, printed, chalked, transferred and the backgrounds painted.  It was late so I called it a day.  But for today's date, I'm calling the first two....tomorrow I'll call the second two.

First two are the tangerines and the grapefruit.  The tangerine was inspired by a painting I saw on Daily Paintworks....the orange fruit, the green leaves and the dark background made for a very dramatic still life!  I found a picture on Pexels and away I went.  I decided the background color was better in the photo than in the idea I had in my head (which is the color "darkness").  The blue against the orange spoke to me.  Then there was the reflective surface they were sitting on, I loved that too.  The leaves were the most difficult, that is, to show how they bend and curve.  I don't think I really translated that well.  But overall, I'm satisfied with the painting.

The grapefruit painting involved a decision: keep it as a grapefruit....but what if it's really a blood orange...I could likely make it a regular orange if I wanted.  I decided to paint the flesh of the fruit pink, let the viewer make a choice as to whether it was a pink grapefruit or a blood orange.  For the color of the flesh I used Alizarin Crimson and white (in varying degrees).  So, note to self: if you need a deep pink, use Alizarin Crimson (I could have used this advice when painting the pink rose a few days ago, perhaps it wouldn't have turned out so pale).  Although the fruit flesh in the photo is still more intense than the Alizarin Crimson.  I think I'm perhaps too timid when it comes to extreme colors.

#150 7/16/19 1940 Chevy Truck For Sale

I liked the shape of the Michigan truck so much, I decided to try it again, but on a larger canvas.....we have advanced this subject matter to a 5x5 inch canvas!  Dave was with me when I was photographing these trucks.  He was my protector, in case the owner came out with a shotgun.  He would throw himself in front of me, I have no doubt.  He was holding the for sale sign that was propped in front of the truck while I took pictures, but fortunately I took a few with the for sale sign still in place.  That's what I painted tonight.  I think the sign is a key piece of the interest....$10K, 4000 miles, 1940, are you serious??? I wonder if it runs.  It must for $10K.  The phone number is good, in case you're looking for a 1940 Chevy truck!   The painting went smoothly, thank goodness.  I feel like I needed this. 

#149 7/16/19 Pear on an Easel

Another easel painting....thought I would go back to my roots....fruits.  When I posted a bunch of my "appealing" painting on the Daily Paint site - Oh!!! Speaking of!!!  The "Four Fat Apples" sold today from the site listings, woohoooo! 

Where was I?  Yes........posting, the "Pear Make-Over" stole my heart again, so I thought I'd give another pear a chance as an easel painting.  I wanted a darkish mishmash background.  It could probably be darker.  I eye-lined the pear after I painted it, kind of reverse of how I should have done it.  But I repainted the background and overlapped the eyeliner a bit, then I repainted the inside of the pear, and overlapped the eyeliner a bit.  I'm not a fan of the purple shadow, and will work on that next.

#148 7/15/19 Converse Shoes on the Easel

Let's see....I've painted blue converse sneakers on just about every type of canvas I have, except the 3 inch easel canvases.  So that's what I did tonight.  Another perspective of Faith's feet.  I thought maybe, given my extensive experience now with laces, that I'd breeze right through.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  But I still like the painting, even though it's a bit messy-looking.  Usually for these tiny 3 inch wrapped canvases I've been continuing to paint the picture around the edges of the canvas, but I decided that wouldn't work with the shoes.  So all 4 sides were painted gymnasium yellow, like the floor Faith is standing on.  But then, I decided, no the sides should be blue, like the shoes.  So that's were they're at now.

#147 7/15/19 Tiny Easel Truck

I decided to do another 3 inch easel painting, but I wanted to do something other than an animal.  I decided on the old truck that I photographed while on vacation in Michigan.  There's not a lot of room to fit in detail, so I thought that might be good for me, force me to let go of some clutter.  The truck was in the woods, so I had to convey that, but without detail.  They're painted as shadowy woods.  The truck appears to be parked on the side of a grassy road, with a field behind it.  I didn't intend to paint a field, but that's what it looks like, due likely to the very light green used for the foliage.  The running boards look to be a mess, I didn't like the edge, so I scuttled it.  There's a better term for that, but it's not coming to me presently.  I'm going to redo those running boards as soon as I punch the "publish" button.  Here we go!

#146 7/14/19 Pink Rose

I decided I'd do one more painting today.  It was a mojo check, plus I am woefully behind in my 300 paintings in a year quest.  Time to get cracking!  I suffered through the red rose painting, done months ago.  So why I would choose to do another rose is beyond me.  Actually, it's not, I saw some really nice roses on the Daily Paintworks website, and thought I could do it.  Just paint what you see, geez how hard can that be?  I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked on this one, kept adjusting the pink tints here and there.  With the car-guy's voice ringing in my ear, "Good artists know when they're done" and didn't want to prematurely abandon the thing.  It certainly never got to that place where I said, "Voila, it's a lovely rose!"  It did get to the place where I said, "Hmmm, this looks better than it did 10 minutes ago....let's go for another 10 minutes and reassess."  I was going for romance, that's what I'll explain to people.

After I finished this, I went back to the bike painting, added the red that was needed on the leaves, added a few more bike spokes, put some light blue on the fenders, added a bit of green to the little bush.....it still looks like a disaster.

Speaking of the Daily Paintworks website, I am finally taking advantage of their free first month.  I listed the Red Truck Bed last weekend, and this morning I listed 17 other paintings that I thought turned out OK (ie not embarrassing).  I listed them with free shipping, but increased the price from the Farmer's Market stand, as it took quite a bit of time to get them photographed and cropped and then listed (and if they sell, the packaging and postage will factor in too).  Wish me luck!  Bonne Chance! (I've been reading Anna Karenina, and they use that French phrase a lot, so I now keep finding places to use it.)

#145 7/14/19 Cute Cat Face

Given that the cute cat face on the easel sold yesterday, and given that my mojo has been missing all week, I thought I'd give the cute cat face another go.  It's on a 5x5 canvas instead of the little 3x3's on the easel.  I felt better about myself after this painting.  It went smoothly, the colors were relatively unimportant...grays, browns, blacks, semi-whites.  It's such a relaxed cat-bliss sight, that I was very happy with it as I stood back and looked it over to see if I deemed it "done".  Dave had on a car-program while I was painting, and as I was finishing up, the car-guy on the program said something to the effect of: a good artist knows when to stop and call their artwork complete.  He was referring to an old car they were refurbishing, but I took it as a sign to say, "He's right.  I think this one is done."

#144 7/7/19 Delivery Bicycle

This is the last of the summer vacation planned paintings that had to wait.  The bicycle picture is from Pexels....I loved the twilight lighting, blue but with colorful leaves on the ground.  The bike has nice geometric lines that are different than the geometric lines of the building it is parked in front of.  I got most of it down on 7/7/19, started it with a red canvas, to get the red leaves and eerie blue atmosphere.  But I decided it should dry a bit before I tried to put down the wheel spokes.  I had that same feeling of dread as with the cables on the Golden Gate Bridge.  So the week went by, with me looking at the spokeless wheels and me saying, "not tonight honey".  I felt like I had lost my mojo.  I did lots of stuff, just not painting (and not house cleaning, I seriously need to think about hiring a cleaner). On Saturday, 7/13/19, I took my paintings to the Farmer's Market and set them up with my new contraption that I found at the Goodwill store - some sort of wire shelf you bolt to the wall and store DVD's maybe?  Whatever it is, when it's flat on the table, it lets my little paintings stand up in a row.  I managed to sell one little painting, to a young boy (surprise), it's the little easel painting of the cat face (which I thought wouldn't appeal to a youngster given how up-close it is).  Here's a pic of the display:

Back to the bike: it's done....not sure I like it.  No, I'm sure.  I don't like it.  I got the blue feel OK.  The bike is OK.  It's the wheels. I stressed over the wheels and it shows.  The red leaves ended up being orange, I should fix that.  Uggh.  I need to get my mojo back.

#143 7/5/19 Red Carnation

This is the photograph that I used for the nephews for their upside-down drawing. Truth be told, I'm still putting down my drawings with tracings....helps me speed things along, helps me to focus just on my painting successes and failures (instead of drawing or perspective failures).  I like how this painting turned out, it's nice to look at.  The pinkie finger looks a little wonky, but if I hadn't of mentioned it you likely wouldn't have looked that close at it.  I like the fact that the flower doesn't have much detail on it, yet I can tell it's a carnation.  But when I look at the skin tones in the photo now, and compare them to my skin tones in the painting....I wonder why I insist on using raw umber for every dark crevice.  Surely I can figure out how to make a really dark peach color.  I will attempt to pay better attention to that with my next try at "hands".

You know those little games in the Sunday Funnies - the "Spot 6 Differences between these two pictures"?  That is what I essentially do when I post these pictures here on the blog.  I see the photo vs the painting and start mentally listing what's different (ie what's wrong) about the painting.  I probably should tone the critique down a bit.  As I look back at my initial paintings, it is really quite amazing how far I've come.  Practice, practice, practice!

#142, 7/4/19 Hot Coffee

I am trying to wrap up the canvases that I took on vacation, but didn't complete.  The funeral for my uncle was amazing, lots of relatives, lots of love.  The burial was the day after the funeral, for close family only.  It was a stunningly gorgeous day.  There was an old yellow pick-up truck parked next to the cemetery, of which I took lots of photographs for later painting! After the burial, lunch, then we drove through Maugansville, the town in which my uncle (and his 4 siblings) were raised.  My dad was the only sibling still in town, and I'm so happy he was there.  We stopped in Maugansville to admire the house they grew up in, my Nana and Grandpop's house, so many happy memories of visits in that house.  Dave and I actually lived in the house for a few months while our current house was being built.  While we were looking and commenting on what's the same and what's changed, the woman who lives in the house came out to inquire...and hearing our story, invited us all in.  She gave us a tour, and we gave her lots of history about the house.  She was thrilled to know we had so many happy memories of her home, and we were thrilled with her generosity.  Before we left she offered a prayer for the deceased, and for all of us.  I was in tears.  I'm in tears as I write this.  It took a few days to get back to painting....

This is a photo I've used before, but I wanted to keep my first try at painting it, as it was one of my first paintings that I really liked.  This one is on a larger canvas, not by much, just a little, but it felt much bigger for some reason.  It was a canvas that was painted blue with acrylic paint, and I thought it might lend an interesting hue to the orange coffee cup.  I had trouble getting the lip of the cup to cooperate color-wise, perhaps the blue underneath caused the trouble?  You can see at the top right area of the cup that I tried too many times to change the color, it looks miserable.  But overall, looking at the painting, it's all OK.  Not great, but OK.

#141, 6/28/19, Shuttle Launch

My final vacation painting.  I liked the fire and smoke clouds on this one, against the backdrop of a blue sky with regular clouds, the adventure that awaits, the science that had to be mastered.  Woosh!  It's taken 30+ years to see it as something amazing.  I watched the Challenger Shuttle launch on television as it occurred.  I was at the end of my maternity leave, sitting on the tufted swivel rocker nursing my first baby, Matthew.  I kept thinking perhaps they survived, perhaps they were insulated from the explosion, they couldn't have died right there as the world watched.  I was a bit scarred, and thankful that Matthew was too young to comprehend the crazy horrible things that happen in the world.

The first thing that went down on this painting was the blue sky, then the scaffolding (which I kind of made up a bit, thinking it just needed to be an "idea" of scaffolding), then the smoke clouds (of which I painted bright orange first, then the smoke over top of that), then the rocket and the shuttle, then the concrete base structure, the grassy lawn...finally, last, the fire - a color I didn't think was part of any pigment scheme (and I think I'm right, the intense fire that I have in this painted rendition doesn't compare at all to the color in the photograph, it's like a neon paint is needed).  But I deemed it complete, and will beg forgiveness to anyone who points out that the fire isn't very firey. 

#140, 6/28/19, An Ostrich

After the Golden Gate Bridge, I was ready to do something simple, let my mind relax a bit.  The ostrich fit the bill.  Most of the painting is the background, which has nothing in it.  Perfect.  Plus, the subject is so light-hearted.  The goofy bird just makes me smile.  This one went super-fast, maybe 30 minutes.  The background was originally flat, and I didn't like it.  So I added lots of visible brush strokes.  I feel like it gives the illusion of water, though that's not what's in the photo.  I couldn't quite capture the wispiness of some parts of the bird's head, but for the most part he's got some feathery texture. This may be the craziest subject I've decided to paint, it kind of begs the question, "Why?"

#139 6/28/19 Golden Gate Bridge

We found out that my Uncle Gene (my Dad's older brother) passed away on Thursday, 6/27.  He was admitted to the hospital (the same hospital in which I work) a few days before I left for vacation, so I was able to spend some time with him and my two cousins, Lori and Jenny, before leaving for Michigan.  Uncle Gene had been using oxygen for over a year, plus dealing with liver cancer, thyroid issues, kidney issues, etc....not in good health at all, and quite house-bound....admitting diagnosis pneumonia, which morphed into adult respiratory syndrome.  So on one hand we're saddened to lose him, and on the other hand we know he's been released from suffering.  The funeral is Sunday....we drive back to Maryland on Saturday, and the plan now entails my father and two of my brothers also driving to Maryland to attend the funeral.

Today is my last vacation day to paint.  Three photos from Pexel are in the line-up.  I decide to start with what I believed would be the hardest.  The Golden Gate Bridge has water, sky, land, a distant city, distant mountains, cars and a boat.....oh, and the bridge.  Where to start?  The bridge went in first, all but the vertical cables.  Those went in last.  That was nerve wracking, because I liked what I had completed up to that point.  The sky went in easy, the water went in easy, the distant mountains went in easy, the distant city buildings went in (not easy, but they're there), the cars were dabs, the boat a bit more than a dab, with bubbled water behind it.  Finally I had to add the vertical cables, yikes.  Fortunately, the scene kept its integrity as an artistic rendition.  Everything in this painting is distant, so nothing needed to be done with detail.  I kept the closer cables heavier than the far cables.  My sister-in-law, Alisa, took a liking to this one too, as she used to live in the Oakland/San Francisco area and said she's always wanted a memento.  She thought this painting would do it, plus she got to see it being painted.  Two of my works, going to California!

#138 6/28/19 Stadium Seating

Another photo off of Pexels.  The blue color, the repetition of the seats, the patterns, and the numbers are things I wanted to put down.  It was a bit overwhelming at first, but then I tried to go about it systematically.  I loaded the brush with a particular blue shade and did all those bits before I could move on to the next shade.  At the end, I added the numbers.  I tried to keep things loose, as I felt too much detail would detract from the nice pattern of blues.  Then I stood back from a distance and decided the blue wasn't right....it was a much lighter version of the turquoise that my brain insisted was there, so I added a bit more pigment to the seat-backs and then decided I was going to ruin the feel of the painting if I dinked much more with it.  So I called it done.

#137 6/27/19 Penguins Chatting

I don't know why this picture appealed to me.  The penguins looked amiable, perhaps that is the appeal.  I got a bit frustrated trying to get the rocky foreground.  What I ended up with is some childish looking swipes of dark paint....not a great effort.  Texture seems beyond my skill set still.  The big ice chunks I painted over, as the white was competing (too well) for prominence over the white bellies of the penguins.  I liked my white mountains in the distance though.  They kind of happened as a happy accident and I kept them.  I tried to lighten the mountains as they went further into the distance.  I think I captured the penquins' amiability toward one another, but I think I misrepresented their feet.  Where is the salmon color?

#136 6/26/19 The Red IH Truck, third time around

This painting I started in the evening....and finished it late in the night.  Still on vacation...my family around, my brother Doug was looking at the almost finished painting and commented that I likely should have left off the ? (he had a name for it, but I don't recall it) on the top of the side-window, as it was an after-market option and some might think it detracts from the otherwise historic nature of the truck.  Ummmm.  He said the tires aren't original too.  Ummmm.  Now I remember.  Doug used to drive a red pickup, it was named Big Red.  I don't know what make or model it was, perhaps also an International Harvester.

I started this with an already red (acrylic painted) canvas.  It went pretty easily, but it is after all my third time painting this truck.  I took a short walk down the street that the lake cottage is on, and next to an old barn found an old turquoise car (the kind with wing tips on the back), then a little further on found an old delivery truck and a Studebaker fire truck.  I went back to the cottage to get my phone so I could photograph them.  So, some time, some where, I'll be painting these 3 new nostalgic vehicles.

As I look at the third truck painting now, there are a few things I'd like to do over: the front wheel and tire (something in the perspective is off), the rear-view mirror (the color is off) and the scenery that is perhaps too blurred out the back and driver's side window.  There may be a fourth Red IH Truck coming.